Sandia National Laboratories (SNL), also known as Sandia, is one of three research and development laboratories of the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and manages the research and development of nuclear power and nuclear weapons in the United Stat ...

National Nuclear Security Administration The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) is a United States federal agency responsible for safeguarding national security through the military application of Nuclear physics, nuclear science. NNSA maintains and enhances the Stockpil ...

(NNSA). Headquartered in Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque, New Mexico, it has a second principal facility next to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

and a test facility in Waimea, Kauai, Hawaii. Sandia is owned by the

U.S. federal government The federal government of the United States (U.S. federal government or U.S. government) is the national government of the United States, a federal republic located primarily in North America, composed of 50 states, a city within a fed ...

but privately managed and operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, a wholly owned subsidiary of

Honeywell International Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance m ...

. Established in 1949, SNL is a "multimission laboratory" with the primary goal of advancing U.S. national security by developing various science-based technologies. Its work spans roughly 70 areas of activity, including nuclear deterrence, arms control, nonproliferation, hazardous waste disposal, and

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to ...

. Sandia hosts a wide variety of research initiatives, including computational biology, mathematics, materials science, alternative energy,

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

MEMS Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), also written as micro-electro-mechanical systems (or microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems) and the related micromechatronics and microsystems constitute the technology of microscopic devices, ...

, and cognitive science. Most notably, it hosted some of the world's earliest and fastest

supercomputers A supercomputer is a computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instructions p ...

ASCI Red ASCI Red (also known as ASCI Option Red or TFLOPS) was the first computer built under the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative ( ASCI), the supercomputing initiative of the United States government created to help the maintenance of the ...

and ASCI Red Storm, and is currently home to the Z Machine, the largest

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

generator in the world, which is designed to test materials in conditions of extreme

temperature Temperature is a physical quantity that expresses quantitatively the perceptions of hotness and coldness. Temperature is measurement, measured with a thermometer. Thermometers are calibrated in various Conversion of units of temperature, temp ...

and

pressure Pressure (symbol: ''p'' or ''P'') is the force applied perpendicular to the surface of an object per unit area over which that force is distributed. Gauge pressure (also spelled ''gage'' pressure)The preferred spelling varies by country and e ...

. Sandia conducts research through partnership agreements with academic, governmental, and commercial entities; educational opportunities are available through several programs, including the Securing Top Academic Research & Talent at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (START HBCU) Program and the Sandia University Partnerships Network (a collaboration with

Purdue University Purdue University is a public land-grant research university in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the flagship campus of the Purdue University system. The university was founded in 1869 after Lafayette businessman John Purdue donated land and mone ...

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,07 ...

, Georgia Institute of Technology,

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univers ...

, and

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

Lab history

Sandia National Laboratories' roots go back to

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

and the

Manhattan Project The Manhattan Project was a research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons. It was led by the United States with the support of the United Kingdom and Canada. From 1942 to 1946, the project w ...

. Prior to the United States formally entering the war, the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

leased land near an Albuquerque, New Mexico airport known as Oxnard Field, to service transient Army and

U.S. Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage o ...

aircraft. In January 1941 construction began on the Albuquerque Army Air Base, leading to establishment of the ''Bombardier School-Army Advanced Flying School'' near the end of the year. Soon thereafter it was renamed Kirtland Field, after early Army military pilot Colonel Roy C. Kirtland, and in mid-1942 the Army acquired Oxnard Field. During the war years facilities were expanded further and Kirtland Field served as a major Army Air Forces training installation. In the many months leading up to successful detonation of the first atomic bomb, the

Trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God th ...

test, and delivery of the first airborne atomic weapon,

Project Alberta Project Alberta, also known as Project A, was a section of the Manhattan Project which assisted in delivering the first nuclear weapons in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. Project Alberta was formed in March 1 ...

J. Robert Oppenheimer J. Robert Oppenheimer (; April 22, 1904 – February 18, 1967) was an American theoretical physicist. A professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Oppenheimer was the wartime head of the Los Alamos Laboratory and is oft ...

, Director of

Los Alamos Laboratory The Los Alamos Laboratory, also known as Project Y, was a secret laboratory established by the Manhattan Project and operated by the University of California during World War II. Its mission was to design and build the first atomic bombs. Ro ...

, and his technical advisor, Hartly Rowe, began looking for a new site convenient to Los Alamos for the continuation of weapons development especially its non-nuclear aspects. They felt a separate division would be best to perform these functions. Kirtland had fulfilled Los Alamos' transportation needs for both the Trinity and Alberta projects, thus, Oxnard Field was transferred from the jurisdiction of the Army Air Corps to the U.S. Army Service Forces Chief of Engineer District, and thereafter, assigned to the Manhattan Engineer District. In July 1945, the forerunner of Sandia Laboratory, known as "Z" Division, was established at Oxnard Field to handle future weapons development, testing, and bomb assembly for the Manhattan Engineer District. The District-directive calling for establishing a secure area and construction of "Z" Division facilities referred to this as "

Sandia Base Sandia Base was the principal nuclear weapons installation of the United States Department of Defense from 1946 to 1971. It was located on the southeastern edge of Albuquerque, New Mexico. For 25 years, the top-secret Sandia Base and its subsidi ...

" , after the nearby

Sandia Mountains The Sandia Mountains (Southern Tiwa: ''Posu gai hoo-oo'', Keres: ''Tsepe,'' Navajo: ''Dził Nááyisí''; Tewa: ''O:ku:p’į'', Northern Tiwa: ''Kep’íanenemą''; Towa: ''Kiutawe'', Zuni: ''Chibiya Yalanne'') are a mountain range located i ...

— apparently the first official recognition of the "Sandia" name. Sandia Laboratory was operated by the

University of California The University of California (UC) is a public land-grant research university system in the U.S. state of California. The system is composed of the campuses at Berkeley, Davis, Irvine, Los Angeles, Merced, Riverside, San Diego, San Franci ...

until 1949, when President

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

asked Western Electric, a subsidiary of

American Telephone and Telegraph AT&T Corporation, originally the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is the subsidiary of AT&T Inc. that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agen ...

(AT&T), to assume the operation as an "opportunity to render an exceptional service in the national interest." Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Electric, was formed on October 5, 1949, and, on November 1, 1949, took over management of the Laboratory. The

United States Congress The United States Congress is the legislature of the federal government of the United States. It is bicameral, composed of a lower body, the House of Representatives, and an upper body, the Senate. It meets in the U.S. Capitol in Washing ...

designated Sandia Laboratories as a National laboratory in 1979. In October 1993, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) was managed and operated by Sandia Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. In December 2016, it was announced that National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia, under the direction of

, would take over the management of Sandia National Laboratories beginning May 1, 2017; this contract remains in effect as of November 2022, covering government-owned facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico (SNL/NM);

Livermore, California Livermore (formerly Livermorès, Livermore Ranch, and Nottingham) is a city in Alameda County, California. With a 2020 population of 87,955, Livermore is the most populous city in the Tri-Valley. It is located on the eastern edge of Californ ...

(SNL/CA); Tonopah, Nevada;

Shoreview, Minnesota Shoreview is a city in Ramsey County, Minnesota. The population was 25,043 at the time of the 2010 census. In 2008, Shoreview ranked fourth in a ''Family Circle'' list of best family towns. Geography According to the United States Census Burea ...

; and

Kauai, Hawaii Kauai, () anglicized as Kauai ( ), is geologically the second-oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands (after Niʻihau). With an area of 562.3 square miles (1,456.4 km2), it is the fourth-largest of these islands and the 21st largest island ...

. SNL/NM is headquarters and the largest laboratory, employing more than 6,600 employees, while SNL/CA is a smaller laboratory, with about 850 employees. Tonopah and Kauai are occupied on a "campaign" basis, as test schedules dictate. Sandia led a project that studied how to decontaminate a subway system in the event of a biological weapons attack (such as anthrax). As of September 2017, the process to decontaminate subways in such an event is "virtually ready to implement," said a lead Sandia engineer. Sandia's integration with its local community includes a program through the Department of Energy's Tribal Energy program to deliver alternative renewable power to remote Navajo communities, spearheaded by senior engineer

Sandra Begay Sandra K. Begay is an American/Navajo Nation mechanical engineer who designs research and development systems at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico. In 2020, she was honored by the American Indian Science and Engineering Soc ...

Legal issues

On February 13, 2007, a New Mexico State Court found Sandia Corporation liable for $4.7 million in damages for the firing of a former network security analyst, Shawn Carpenter, who had reported to his supervisors that hundreds of military installations and defense contractors' networks were compromised and sensitive information was being stolen including hundreds of sensitive Lockheed documents on the

Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter ''Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter'' (MRO) is a spacecraft designed to study the geology and climate of Mars, provide reconnaissance of future landing sites, and relay data from surface missions back to Earth. It was launched on August 12, 2005, an ...

project. When his supervisors told him to drop the investigation and do nothing with the information, he went to intelligence officials in the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

and later the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

to address the national security breaches. When Sandia managers discovered his actions months later, they revoked his

security clearance A security clearance is a status granted to individuals allowing them access to classified information (state or organizational secrets) or to restricted areas, after completion of a thorough background check. The term "security clearance" is ...

and fired him. In 2014, an investigation determined Sandia Corp. used lab operations funds to pay for lobbying related to the renewal of its $2 billion contract to operate the lab. Sandia Corp. and its parent company, Lockheed Martin, agreed to pay a $4.8 million fine.

Technical areas

Sandia national laboratories researcher (46702906002)

SNL/NM consists of five technical areas (TA) and several additional test areas. Each TA has its own distinctive operations; however, the operations of some groups at Sandia may span more than one TA, with one part of a team working on a problem from one angle, and another subset of the same team located in a different building or area working with other specialized equipment. A description of each area is given below. TA-I operations are dedicated primarily to three activities the design, research, and development of

weapon A weapon, arm or armament is any implement or device that can be used to deter, threaten, inflict physical damage, harm, or kill. Weapons are used to increase the efficacy and efficiency of activities such as hunting, crime, law enforcement, ...

systems; limited production of weapon system components; and energy programs. TA-I facilities include the main

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

and offices,

laboratories A laboratory (; ; colloquially lab) is a facility that provides controlled conditions in which scientific or technological research, experiments, and measurement may be performed. Laboratory services are provided in a variety of settings: physici ...

, and shops used by administrative and technical staff. TA-II is a facility that was established in 1948 for the assembly of chemical

high explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An ...

main charges for nuclear weapons and later for production scale assembly of nuclear weapons. Activities in TA-II include the

decontamination Decontamination (sometimes abbreviated as decon, dcon, or decontam) is the process of removing contaminants on an object or area, including chemicals, micro-organisms or radioactive substances. This may be achieved by chemical reaction, disinfecti ...

decommissioning Decommissioning is a general term for a formal process to remove something from an active status, and may refer to: Infrastructure * Decommissioned offshore * Decommissioned highway * Greenfield status of former industrial sites * Nuclear decommi ...

, and remediation of facilities and

landfills A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste ...

used in past research and development activities. Remediation of the Classified Waste Landfill which started in March 1998, neared completion in FY2000. A testing facility, the Explosive Component Facility, integrates many of the previous TA-II test activities as well as some testing activities previously performed in other remote test areas. The Access Delay Technology Test Facility is also located in TA-II. TA-III is adjacent to and south of TA-V oth are approximately seven miles (11 km) south of TA-I TA-III facilities include extensive design-test facilities such as rocket sled tracks,

centrifuge A centrifuge is a device that uses centrifugal force to separate various components of a fluid. This is achieved by spinning the fluid at high speed within a container, thereby separating fluids of different densities (e.g. cream from milk) or ...

s and a radiant

heat In thermodynamics, heat is defined as the form of energy crossing the boundary of a thermodynamic system by virtue of a temperature difference across the boundary. A thermodynamic system does not ''contain'' heat. Nevertheless, the term is ...

facility. Other facilities in TA-III include a paper destructor, the Melting and Solidification Laboratory and the Radioactive and Mixed Waste Management Facility (RMWMF). RMWMF serves as central processing facility for packaging and storage of low-level and mixed waste. The remediation of the Chemical Waste Landfill, which started in September 1998, is an ongoing activity in TA-III. TA-IV, located approximately 1/2 mile (1 km) south of TA-I, consists of several inertial-confinement

fusion Fusion, or synthesis, is the process of combining two or more distinct entities into a new whole. Fusion may also refer to: Science and technology Physics *Nuclear fusion, multiple atomic nuclei combining to form one or more different atomic nucl ...

research and pulsed power research facilities, including the High Energy Radiation Megavolt Electron Source (Hermes-III), the Z Facility, the Short Pulsed High Intensity Nanosecond X-Radiator (SPHINX) Facility, and the Saturn Accelerator. TA-IV also hosts some computer science and cognition research. TA-V contains two research reactor facilities, an intense gamma irradiation facility (using

cobalt-60 Cobalt-60 (60Co) is a synthetic radioactive isotope of cobalt with a half-life of 5.2713 years. It is produced artificially in nuclear reactors. Deliberate industrial production depends on neutron activation of bulk samples of the monoisot ...

and

caesium-137 Caesium-137 (), cesium-137 (US), or radiocaesium, is a radioactive isotope of caesium that is formed as one of the more common fission products by the nuclear fission of uranium-235 and other fissionable isotopes in nuclear reactors and nucle ...

sources), and the

Hot Cell Shielded nuclear radiation containment chambers are commonly referred to as hot cells. The word "hot" refers to radioactivity. Hot cells are used in both the nuclear-energy and the nuclear-medicines industries. They are required to protect in ...

Facility. SNL/NM also has test areas outside of the five technical areas listed above. These test areas, collectively known as Coyote Test Field, are located southeast of TA-III and/or in the canyons on the west side of the Manzanita Mountains. Facilities in the Coyote Canyon Test Field include the Solar Tower Facility (34.9623 N, 106.5097 W), the Lurance Canyon Burn Site and the Aerial Cable Facility.

Open-source software

Solar panel testing, Sandia National Laboratories

In the 1970s, the Sandia, Los Alamos, Air Force Weapons Laboratory Technical Exchange Committee initiated the development of the

SLATEC SLATEC Common Mathematical Library is a FORTRAN 77 library of over 1400 general purpose mathematical and statistical routines. The code was developed at US Government research laboratories and is therefore public domain software. "SLATEC" is an a ...

library of mathematical and statistical routines, written in FORTRAN 77. Today, Sandia National Laboratories is home to several

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

projects: * FCLib (Feature Characterization Library) is a library for the identification and manipulation of coherent regions or structures from spatio-temporal data. FCLib focuses on providing data structures that are "feature-aware" and support feature-based analysis. It is written in C and developed under a " BSD-like" license. *

LAMMPS Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator (LAMMPS) is a molecular dynamics program from Sandia National Laboratories. LAMMPS makes use of Message Passing Interface (MPI) for parallel communication and is free and open-source softw ...

(Large-scale Atomic/Molecular Massively Parallel Simulator) is a molecular dynamics library that can be used to model parallel atomic/subatomic processes at large scale. It is produced under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general ...

(GPL) and distributed on the Sandia National Laboratories website as well as

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

. * LibVMI is a library for simplifying the reading and writing of memory in running virtual machines, a technique known as virtual machine introspection. It is licensed under the

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

. * MapReduce-MPI Library is an implementation of

MapReduce MapReduce is a programming model and an associated implementation for processing and generating big data sets with a parallel, distributed algorithm on a cluster. A MapReduce program is composed of a ''map'' procedure, which performs filtering ...

for distributed-memory parallel machines, utilizing the Message Passing Interface (MPI) for communication. It is developed under a modified Berkeley Software Distribution license. * MultiThreaded Graph Library (MTGL) is a collection of graph-based algorithms designed to take advantage of parallel, shared-memory architectures such as the Cray XMT, Symmetric Multiprocessor (SMP) machines, and multi-core workstations. It is developed under a BSD License. *

ParaView ParaView is an open-source multiple-platform application for interactive, scientific visualization. It has a client–server architecture to facilitate remote visualization of datasets, and generates level of detail (LOD) models to maintain in ...

is a cross-platform application for performing data analysis and visualization. It is a collaborative effort, developed by Sandia National Laboratories, Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the

United States Army Research Laboratory The U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Army Research Laboratory (DEVCOM ARL) is the U.S. Army's foundational research laboratory. ARL is headquartered at the Adelphi Laboratory Center (ALC) in Adelphi, Maryland. Its largest sing ...

, and funded by the Advanced Simulation and Computing Program. It is developed under a BSD license. *

Pyomo Pyomo is a collection of Python software packages for formulating optimization models. Pyomo was developed by William Hart and Jean-Paul Watson at Sandia National Laboratories and David Woodruff at University of California, Davis. Significant ...

is a python-based optimization

Mathematical Programming Language Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

which supports most commercial and open-source solver engines. * Soccoro, a collaborative effort with Wake Forest and Vanderbilt Universities, is

object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of " objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of p ...

software for performing electronic-structure calculations based on density-functional theory. It utilizes libraries such as MPI,

BLAS Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms (BLAS) is a specification that prescribes a set of low-level routines for performing common linear algebra operations such as vector addition, scalar multiplication, dot products, linear combinations, and matrix ...

, and

LAPACK LAPACK ("Linear Algebra Package") is a standard software library for numerical linear algebra. It provides routines for solving systems of linear equations and linear least squares, eigenvalue problems, and singular value decomposition. It als ...

and is developed under the GNU General Public License. * Titan Informatics Toolkit is a collection of cross-platform libraries for ingesting, analyzing, and displaying scientific and informatics data. It is a collaborative effort with Kitware, Inc., and uses various open-source components such as the

Boost Graph Library Boost is a set of libraries for the C++ programming language that provides support for tasks and structures such as linear algebra, pseudorandom number generation, multithreading, image processing, regular expressions, and unit testing. It conta ...

. It is developed under a

New BSD license BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD li ...

. *

Trilinos Trilinos is a collection of open-source software libraries, called ''packages'', intended to be used as building blocks for the development of scientific applications. The word "Trilinos" is Greek and conveys the idea of "a string of pearls", sugg ...

is an object-oriented library for building scalable scientific and engineering applications, with a focus on linear algebra techniques. Most Trilinos packages are licensed under a

Modified BSD License BSD licenses are a family of permissive free software licenses, imposing minimal restrictions on the use and distribution of covered software. This is in contrast to copyleft licenses, which have share-alike requirements. The original BSD lice ...

. * Xyce is an open source,

SPICE A spice is a seed, fruit, root, bark, or other plant substance primarily used for flavoring or coloring food. Spices are distinguished from herbs, which are the leaves, flowers, or stems of plants used for flavoring or as a garnish. Spice ...

-compatible, high-performance analog circuit simulator, capable of solving extremely large circuit problems.
Charon
is a TCAD simulator which was open-sourced by Sandia in 2020. . It is significant as previously there were no major TCAD simulators for large-scale simulations that were open source. In addition, Sandia National Laboratories collaborates with Kitware, Inc. in developing the Visualization Toolkit (VTK), a cross-platform graphics and visualization software suite. This collaboration has focused on enhancing the information visualization capabilities of VTK and has in turn fed back into other projects such as ParaView and Titan.

Self-guided bullet

On January 30, 2012, Sandia announced that it successfully test-fired a self-guided dart that can hit targets at . The dart is long, has its center of gravity at the nose, and is made to be fired from a small-caliber

smoothbore A smoothbore weapon is one that has a barrel without rifling. Smoothbores range from handheld firearms to powerful tank guns and large artillery mortars. History Early firearms had smoothly bored barrels that fired projectiles without signi ...

gun. It is kept straight in flight by four electromagnetically actuated fins encased in a plastic puller sabot that falls off when the dart leaves the bore. The dart cannot be fired from conventional rifled barrels because the gyroscopic stability provided by rifling grooves for regular bullets would prevent the self-guided bullet from reliably turning towards a target when in flight, so fins are responsible for stabilizing rather than spinning. A

laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fi ...

designator marks a target, which is tracked by the dart's optical sensor and 8-bit CPU. The guided projectile is kept cheap because it does not need an inertial measurement unit, since its small size allows it to make the fast corrections necessary without the aid of an IMU. The natural body frequency of the bullet is about 30

hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that o ...

, so corrections can be made 30 times per second in flight. Muzzle velocity with commercial gunpowder is (Mach 2.1), but military customized gunpowder can increase its speed and range. Computer modeling shows that a standard bullet would miss a target at by , while an equivalent guided bullet would hit within . Accuracy increases as distances get longer, since the bullet's motions settle more the longer it is in flight.Self-guided bullet could hit laser-marked targets from a mile away
- Gizmag.com, 31 January 2012

Supercomputers

List of

that have been operated by or resided at Sandia: * Intel Paragon XP/S 140, 1993 to ? *

, 1997 to 2006 * Red Storm, 2005 to 2012 * Cielo, 2010 to 2016 *

, 2015 to current * Astra, 2018 to current, based on ARM processors * Attaway, 2019 to current

References

External links

*
DOE Laboratory Fact Sheet
{{Authority control Economy of Albuquerque, New Mexico Nuclear weapons infrastructure of the United States United States Department of Energy national laboratories Federally Funded Research and Development Centers Supercomputer sites Weapons manufacturing companies Honeywell Lockheed Martin Livermore, California Military research of the United States 1949 establishments in New Mexico Research institutes in New Mexico